


Verge

by shadoedseptmbr



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Omega DLC, Shenko - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-01
Updated: 2014-08-01
Packaged: 2018-02-11 08:26:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2061048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadoedseptmbr/pseuds/shadoedseptmbr





	Verge

He found her in the medbay, Chakwas chewing her out and a monitor skimming over her, taking readings.  And he had to stop a moment, relief making his knees weak even as blank fury threatened to choke him. 

He couldn’t yell at her, not even soldier to soldier.  The curve of her back and her bent neck when she sat up stopped him short.  And if he hadn’t read her body, there was Chakwas with a shake of her head to warn him off.

“I’m alright.  Doc…I’m okay.”  Shepard, trying to reassure her medical officer and lying through her teeth, again.

“That’s not what the monitors say.  Dehydrated, malnourished.  Chronic lack of sleep.  You are going to  _kill_  yourself, Commander, and you don’t have that luxury.”

“It was worse than we expected, supplies were short.  I came home soon as I could.”

Despite the blunt phrasing there was an apology in that, in her weary voice and she turned her head and caught his eye.  Meant for him, too. 

Home.

“Shepard…” It comes out as a sigh, exasperated. 

“I’ll give you a minute.  Watch that monitor, Major.”  Chakwas stepped out gracefully.

She pushed herself wearily up and off the cot. “Would you…I could use something hot…”

‘I’m just supposed to watch.”  But he went to the hotplate Chakwas kept in the medbay and poured a mug of hot water and dropped a tea tab into the steaming mug.  He came back to find her propped against the cot, still, looking at the calloused palms of her hands. 

He placed the mug in her view, waiting until her fingers curled around it, careful not to brush his.  Shepard wrinkled her nose and he could count the six freckles there.  “Ugh.”

“Decaf green tea.  S’good for you.”

“No sweetner?” 

He did his best to stay stern even against the slight whine in her voice.  “Chakwas doesn’t have any and I’m not leaving.”

She grimaced but sipped the brew anyway.  “Thanks.”

“Shepard…”

She stopped him with a look. “Give me an hour, Kaidan.  Just to make sure there isn’t anything that’s going to cave in right this minute and then…I’ll…we’ll talk.  Okay?

“An hour.” 

“I’ve got to get it written up.  Hackett will want to know about the eezo.”

“Dictate it, EDI and I’ll clean it up while you rest and you can voice stamp it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, Shep.”

“Thanks," she repeated.  It took her a beat to focus on the next goal.  "What’s…?” Shepard paused and then, more formally, “Report, Major.”

“Hackett called.  We cleared out a Cerberus base on Medan.  No casualties.  Garrus has those forward guns on a hair trigger.  We transferred a load of supplies to ferry to Noveria since it’s on our route.  I’ve got a training session down in the cargo hold for…unconventional subroutine redirection, based on what we found on Medan.  Traynor’s got the full report we forwarded to Hackett.” 

“Right.  Thanks, Major.”  As Chakwas came back in, Shepard was already on the comm, “Traynor, give me the report…”

A call to Hackett, a call to Anderson.  A list of reports from all her stations and two promised lectures from Garrus and Liara later and Chakwas was hooking her up to a drip.  “Down.  For six hours, minimum," the doc made it an order.

Not listening, but as always listening _in_ , Joker commented, “Ten hours to Noveria, Commander.”  

Shepard took a shallow breath.  “Nine hours okay, Doc?”

The older woman scoffed.  “I’ll believe it when I see it, Commander.” She handed the bagged liquid to Kaidan, hovering at her elbow.  He recognized the mix; nutrients and electrolytes.  “Can you still monitor an IV, Major?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then let me know if her vitals haven’t normalized by the end of this one and I’ll send up another.”

“Can I shower with that in, Doc?”

“I would recommend it, even if you couldn’t.”

Shepard chuckled weakly and slid off the table, tipping her head at her warden, who was rubbing away deep lines around his eyes as if maybe he hadn’t slept in, oh…a week or so. “C’mon, then.” 

Shepard was her normal upright self, a little bounce in her step as she walked from medbay to the elevator, but it all bled away as the doors closed and she slumped and Kaidan wasn’t sure if his arm around her waist wasn’t all that kept her upright.

Her hair was stiff and plastered to her forehead.  There was a reddish brown streak crusted down the back of her neck.  Her skin smelled of eezo and blood, sweat and adrenaline, but she stiffened when she felt his arm against her back, through the underarmor she had yet to shed.  “You don’t have to, Major.  I promise I’ll lie down.” Grey eyes still focused on the metal door. 

Kaidan pulled her closer, silently, and she gave up, leaning into him.   

He didn’t start.  Even after a session with the junior tech crew to blow off steam, he was still...well.  Leaving his arm around her waist, he rubbed his other hand across the back of his own neck, feeling the niggle of pain starting, just below the ridge in his skull.  

“EDI? Impersonal monitors only, please.  Elevator and the cabin.”

“Yes, Commander Shepard.”

Shepard took a deep breath.  Kaidan had caught the jist of the official report earlier, but Shepard was a master of official versus actual.  “Aria was supposed to have a plan.  She was supposed to have a plan and an overwhelming force.  I was supposed to be back the next day not AWOL for a…week?”  She asked like she still wasn't sure what day it was.

“About a week.  8 days.”   _16 hours.  41 minutes and 13.8 seconds_   “Give or take.”

Her spine popped between her shoulders.  “We ended up crash landing on Omega with her under-trained force mostly dead and scattered, with a couple dozen of some sort of…”  Her fingers spread out, hands lifted in half bemusement, half exasperation.  “Mutant self-replicating Reaper-Cerebus hybrid on the loose and a gang of half-starved street rats turned rebel as our main backup.” 

“You got it clear, though?”  He’d been digging his palm into the lower part of her back and, with another pop, she nearly went limp against his side.

“Yup.  Got a pretty upper level Cerebus goon to turn screwtape, too.  And access to Aria’s Eezo mines for the Alliance.” 

“So…not a bad haul, then.” Focus on what she’s focusing on and then ease into what happened before she left.

It startled him when she turned into him suddenly, knocking her head under his chin like a pushy cat.   Her voice was muffled against his throat and her breath was warm and maybe a little sour.  “I swear I didn’t mean to disappear for a week.”

 He spanned the nape of her neck, hiding the streak of blood that dried there a day or so ago, rubbing slowly.  “I know.”

“I’m sorry, Kaidan.”

He released the breath he hadn’t realized he was still holding as the door slid open into her cabin and he steered her down the stairs.  “I was the one asking stupid questions.  I’m sorry, too.”

“It wasn’t a stupid question.  I just…I don’t know what brought it on.  Why now?”  She winced as she lifted her arms to unzip the filthy underarmor and he patted her hands to stop them.  Shepard nodded permission and Kaidan flicked his fingers under the seal to release it. 

He kept talking to distract them both.  “I just.  I had a moment, you know.  It was…you’ve been kind of distant.  I thought maybe…maybe you were thinking of someone else.”

Her last layer kept her quiet for a moment, but as she emerged from the ruined tshirt, she nodded.  “I might have…if it hadn’t been so.  Kaidan…you know, I thought I was just…it was like I wasn’t real.  Like I was still dead and just awake long enough to deal with one more thing.  I wasn’t about to bring anyone else into that.  Even after I got to know them.  _Like_ them. Didn’t seem fair.” 

She was sick and exhausted and it wasn’t fair of him to use that to make her talk.  Or was all still fair, love and war and disgusting armor?   “I’m glad you had friends.  I’m glad you weren’t alone.”

Her eyes were locked on the bubbles in the empty tank.  Watching them float to the top of the water.  The plants waved with an illusion of life.  “I tried to be for a while.  Tried to just keep it...professional.  Didn't work.  Not very good at being alone anymore."  

He let his hands frame her shoulders.  "Good."  Even bowed, even tired, there’s strength;  taut and firm just under her skin.  Her hands crept up and covered his fingers.  They stood for just a moment until he felt her waver.  “Go take your shower, Shepard.” 

"Hmmm’kay.”  She didn’t move until he moved with her, pushing gently towards the stall.  She pointed out the hook for the IV bag.  He’d used it for his towel a couple of times and he frowned as it dawned on him, she’d used it for a bag before.  That was what it was for.

He reached in to turn on the shower, expecting she’d skim off the rest of her underwear before she stepped in, but she just walked into the small tiled space, the black fabric soaked through in a second.  “Hotter.”

Kaidan dialed up the temperature until it seemed it might just steam off her skin.  She took in one, two, three huge breaths of the water vapor before she lifted her head directly into the pelting stream.  Dried blood, human and alien, mixed with water and old sweat streamed down her body in rust and grey lines, musty and foul. 

Kaidan stripped to the waist in efficient moves before he reached back into the shower.  He thumbed the dispenser and it deposited a puddle of her soap in his hand.  Green and spicy, it scented the steam as he massaged it into her hair and down her back, unlatching the hooks of her bra so she could shrug out of the ruined garment.   She sluiced water across her breasts and stomach, her face, in handfuls.  Kaidan was more careful, trying to avoid the taped valve on the back of her hand.  He knew from experience how the damn things stung.

Before either of them could move lower, she staggered and he caught her.  “Bed.  The rest of you can wait.”

“Yeah.” 

He wrapped her in three thin, skimpy Alliance issued towels and she limped to the bed, the black boyshorts she favored dropping off with a squelch as she walked.  She sat on the side, both freckled knees popping on the way down.  “ _Fuck_.  I feel ninety.” 

There was another hook on the wall.  On the side she slept on.  How often had she nearly burned herself out, trying to do the job that no one else could?  Kaidan hung the bag up over a scuff in the synthetic plating on the wall.  Too many times.  No more. 

But it’s false bravado.  He couldn't stop her. He could only be here and try and stitch her back together.  Just like everyone else on the ship.  “Not quite.”  There were lines on her face that hadn’t been there during the Saren fight, dug between her eyes and beside her mouth.  The terrifying, glowing red scars he’d seen on Horizon were gone, the curved one from before from her Red days had vanished, too.  But she’d picked up small ones from shrapnel and glass explosions, nicks and gouges during the Collector fight and since Mars. 

His thumb brushed her freckles and she nudged up again into his touch and then she laid her head against his hip. 

It struck him then, brushing his fingers through the damp, cropped, red curls, soothing.  This was the difference.  For all the humor laced teasing, lazy flirting, and sly asides, for all the way she’d gotten in his space back on the SR1, the way she’d pushed right up against his barriers, every time he’d reached out for her there had always, always been a moment of fight or flight.  He'd seen it in her eyes and the way she’d tensed before she melted into sensual aggressiveness.

She didn’t tense anymore.   She laid herself open, his to touch.  She hadn’t changed…not really.  He was just inside now, he thought. Just before she’d left, before he’d spoken out, her thigh had been pressed against his.  She laid her feet in his lap while they worked and pulled him down to pillow his head on her lap, when he started to squint.  There hadn’t been any fight.  No impetus to flight.  Since she sat down on her bunk beside him when he woke up from that last bad migraine, every time he reached out, she was there reaching back.  If her head was sometimes not in the room with them, if it was out in space, or fighting some battle, or back on Earth, who the fuck could blame her?

“Damn, Kaidan, I can hear gears churning all the way down here.  You comin’ to bed or what?”

“I’m still on duty.”

  
“My boat, my rules, Major.”

“EDI…”

“Yes, Major?”

“Anyone needs me…”

  
“Your schedule is clear for the afternoon.  Tali is completing the subroutine training.”

“Great.  Thanks.”

“Of course.”

“Go’way, EDI,” Shepard murmured against the damp fabric of his pants. Her fingers toying with the whorl of hair at the base of his spine.  No intent in the contact, beyond connecting.

“Private monitoring, Shepard.  Alarm at 15:30 shiptime.”


End file.
